Will DevOps Aid Acceleration For Independent Software Vendors?

Published April 21st at 11:30am

In recent articles, we’ve spoken a lot about DevOps, WebOps and quite a lot of its effect on enterprise. Moving forward, it is important to consider the effect DevOps has one other aspects of the IT sector. It is therefore important to consider- what does a revamped DevOps mean for independent software vendors?

As a discipline, DevOps brings order to the complex world of application and service development, testing, deployment, scaling and monitoring. DevOps enables a unified approach to enterprise software development and delivery that reflects the needs of the entire application life cycle. DevOps strives for more collaborative, productive relationships between development and operations teams, with faster development cycles and reduced production risks

DevOps carries many advantages over traditional development processes, including fewer bugs, faster fixes and increased visibility. However, it also presents new challenges. A significant reorganization of personnel is required, and DevOps demands a greater degree of interdepartmental coordination.

MSPmentor 501 Honoree Logicalis has identified several ways the cloud can enhance the development process for independent vendors. The New York-based managed service provider (MSP) noted the cloud "can facilitate DevOps changes and accelerate innovation within the software developer’s organization."

"Developers and their IT counterparts are polar opposites in their business lives," said Brian Day, senior director of cloud services at Logicalis US. "But with the help of a savvy cloud or SaaS partner, software providers are realizing significant productivity gains in the people, tools and overall culture of their organizations -- changes that give them a competitive edge in today's fast-paced software development world."

There are many ways in which this can be done the firs being fast releases through a collaborative DevOps which would make it easier for vendors to release smaller updates more frequently. This will then result in automation capabilities which will allow software vendors to automate myriad cloud tasks.

With these cloud-based solutions, independent software vendors could provision their environments using templates thus minimising IT barriers. With this in mind, there would naturally improve testing as DevOps would empower vendors to design, assemble and test smaller pieces of functionality faster than before. Not only will DevOps benefit through aiding acceleration, but it will allow vendors to write automated test cases before they build the code, meaning a more rapid solution due to the code being built much earlier in the development process.

This will change the infrastructure management support as it can now be managed as a whole entity via software tools. This will finally result in collaboration of development and operations teams who can leverage many tools to work together and deliver consistent results.

The key focus independent software vendors should take from this is the mind-set of improving processes by working together and by doing so being in a cycle of work.